The News Sentinel
GATLINBURG, Tenn. — Six people were sent to area hospitals Monday after their motor home crashed on Newfound Gap Road in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, closing the route for the second time in less than 24 hours.
The single-vehicle crash was reported about noon, three miles south of Newfound Gap on the North Carolina side of the park, according to park spokeswoman Nancy Gray.
Six of the seven occupants were injured when the driver, Robert McCanna Reilly III, of Miami, Fla., attempted to pull off the road onto a gravel shoulder and the vehicle fell on its side and slid about 100 feet down a steep embankment.
Two injured passengers, a 13-year-old boy and Eduard Koefler, 57, were airlifted to Memorial Mission Hospital in Asheville, N.C.
The four other injured occupants — Bridgette Koefler, 56; Christopher Koefler, 18; Julia Koefler, 10; and Ino Reilly, 30 — were transported by ambulance to a hospital in Cherokee, N.C.
The Koeflers, all from Austria, were visiting their relatives, the Reillys, Gray said.
Park personnel and several North Carolina-based emergency agencies responded, including technical rescue personnel who hoisted some of the victims up the embankment.
Newfound Gap Road, also designated U.S. Highway 441, was closed for about seven hours as crane was brought in to remove the motor home.
The road had reopened Monday morning around 9 a.m. after park crews worked overnight to clear debris from a rockslide Sunday that had closed the route some six miles north of Cherokee.
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